Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1887-01-21
BOGUS LITERARY RePUTATloNS.
Fashionable Folks Who Masquerade In
other Peoples TaIent-A Curious Craze.

Fashionable Folks Who Masquerade In
other Peoples TaIent-A Curious Craze.
/ have Young friend, a really talented
fellow, who if he had been cast upon the
town would have made place for him
self in literature. He happens to enjoy a
competency, however, and takes life far
too easily TO disturb himself with more
serious employment than the killing of
time He is fond of making literary ex-
periments in his more industrious mo
mentS, and has quite a collection of man
usCript slowed away in his desk, which he
is continually promising himself TO revise
and polish up for publication. Some of
these affairs, stories, sketches, little farces,
fragments of verse, he has read to me,
and they have invariably been sufficiently
ingenious in construction ana good in
quality TO impress themselves upon my
memory.
Judge my amazement, Therefore, when
] found one of the stories | had listened to
over the cigars and grog in his apartments
printed in prominent magazine week
or so ago. Judge of my further astonish-
ment when i noted that il was credited
not TO the real author but to n certain
woman who enjoys quite a literary repu-
tation in society, one of the swell amateurs
who have made writing for the press a
fashion. There had been a sort of senti-
mental weakness on my friends part for
this person | knew. 1t was evident now
that it had gone the length of his lending
her his talent to masquerade in.
got quite a collection of her other stO-
ricS together, or rather of those she has
been credited with writing, and read them
attentively. There was no miStaking their
authorship. Every one bore the earmarks
Of my idle amateur, who would not take
the trouble to seek an outlet Tor his talent,
but was ready to bestow il on a woman
who had caught his platOniC fancy. When
next met him taxed him with this in
Justice to himself, but he laughed the re-
proof lightly off.
Bless your innocent sOulI' he said,
They all do ii. Do yea suppose the
stories Miss y and Mrs. y. sign are any
more original with them than Mrs. Z. s
are with her; The only difference is that
they buy theirs from s1ne professional
scribbler. Mrs. H. happens TO get hers
for a less substantial price
Curiously enough, only couple "a
nights later, encountered at the theatre
an able literary hack whom have knowL
for many years He looked unusually
prosperous. considering his old estate. He
was, he said, earning a good salary as
sub-editor on morning paper, and put
ting in his odd time writing stories an6
poetry. As l had never seen any of these
in print | remarked upon it. He an
swered. little embarrassed:
"Well. you see l don't print them
over my own name. "
| supposed he meant that ne used a
nom de plume, and rs he exhibited no de-
sire TO he confidential I.pressed my in
Quiries no further. | have since learned
that he has for months been supplying one
of our society geniuses with manuscript
which that person adopts as her own. She
pays him handsomely for the work, and
probably gives the manuscript away for
the sake of getting it into type.
There must be plenty of kindred cases
to these, for the literary craze is fairly
rampant in society, and where two eN-
amples of this form of fraud are to be
found you may he bound that Others exist.
However, it is so rarely that literature
gets the benefit of fashionable fad that
we can condone an evil that has a certain
alloy of good. In the eXcesses to which
vanity will run, this is perhaps the most
curious.-Alfred Trumble in The Jour
ualiSt